Research

This Fortune article about Google's research division (or one of them, anyway) isn't about how Google is replacing DARPA, or trying to act like it, or anything similar. It's more about the new leader at ATAP (Advanced Technology and Products), Regina Dugan,  who was previously the director of DARPA.

The idea that Google is doing research on that level brings to mind other research facilities, like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs. The latter was described as "the advanced planning department of the human race," with world-changing inventions like the transistor, Unix, and charge-coupled devices.  Even though AT&T was mostly unable to market the resulting products, and eventually spun it off as Lucent and associated successor companies.

Meanwhile, Google - which celebrated 10 years as a public company today - is using ATAP for their research at a modest level, rethinking cell phones and associated entertainment. There's another area for the projects that aren't quite in their core competencies, like wind energy using kites and self-driving cars. (The Google X Prize appears to be another, separate, entity.) It appears that a new "advanced planning department" has taken shape.

Bell Labs was founded in 1928, although predecessors were around as early as 1893 and formation of the division started around 1925. One coincidence - whether it's interesting is left as an exercise - is that is the same year that Fleming discovered what the penicillium mold could do. A starting date for Google's research facilities is difficult to pin down, but would appear to be soon after the IPO - as with Bell Labs, near the end of the Unraveling and the start of the Crisis.